The Spellcoats by Diana Wynne Jones

[lightreads]

The Spellcoats by Diana Wynne Jones

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Six hundred years earlier in pre-historic Dalemark, a group of children are outcast because they look like the invaders, and they set off down the river at the call of an evil wizard.

I'm starting to suspect that I don't get this series. It doesn't help that I didn't pay quite enough attention to follow along with who all the gods are in relation to whom, though to be fair, they each seem to have five names minimum and they are all each other's grandfather. I thought vaguely that this book is doing some peripherally interesting stuff with historical narratives in translation, but mostly I kept thinking, wait, she is weaving this entire story into the fabric of a coat? …how does that make sense? because I have no romance in my soul.

But the thing is, I suspect I have been reading this wrong from the beginning. I was reading for the narrative of character the first two books suggested: children growing uncomfortably into and out of power, that sort of thing. But this third book is so clearly concerned elsewhere, so preoccupied with Dalemark the country as a character. I mean, this whole '600 years ago' thing is like the flashback episode during sweeps that explains everyone's origin stories, except in this case 'everyone' is a country. I think Jones was really working at the divided land as the center of this series rather than any of the particular children she writes about. The land, and the politics and ethnic conflict its people and gods reflect back and forth. And I just wasn't paying that kind of attention.




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Comments

[jadelennox]

She has a novella set in the same world called 'The True State of Affairs' which is very adult, sort of world building musings on political power and gender and masculine vs. feminine powerlessness. Ssometimes I think she used Dalemark as an experimental platform for her more different worldbuilding ideas.

[lightreads]

Ssometimes I think she used Dalemark as an experimental platform for her more different worldbuilding ideas.

Yes, that. And I'm not entirely sure it was successful -- I can't really tell what she was fully getting at -- but at least it's interesting.